MIJ 60s Traditional JM v MIM 60th Anniversary JM v ?? - Black & Gold Hardware

Discussion of newer designs, copies and reissue offset-waist instruments.
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jesterpunk68
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Re: MIJ 60s Traditional JM v MIM 60th Anniversary JM v ?? - Black & Gold Hardware

Post by jesterpunk68 » Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:11 am

If you like the guitar you have now why not get it painted the way you want it? You could try out some of the newer ones to see what you like but it is also going to depend if you want a players guitar or a collectors guitar too.

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Embenny
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Re: MIJ 60s Traditional JM v MIM 60th Anniversary JM v ?? - Black & Gold Hardware

Post by Embenny » Tue Jan 01, 2019 11:29 am

So you like your current guitar but want a black one. It plays nicely, has a great neck and is otherwise great beyond maybe wanting to change the pickups.

You don't want to "devalue" a blonde JM by painting it, but you want to steal its gold hardware and put chrome on it (which will devalue it, by the way).

Just either paint it, or buy a black MIJ spec body and move everything over, and sell the current body.

The risk of changing bodies is that the tone, feel, and weight/balance could all change in ways you may or may not like. Selling a blonde body and buying a black one will be net cheaper than getting an MIJ body stripped and repainted, but with repainting you know exactly what you're getting.

Selling the entire guitar just to swap some gold hardware and losing the neck you like is probably the most foolish option.

Also, buy yourself some new pickups. You don't like the current ones, and you'll feel a lot less conflicted about your current guitar if you like how it sounds (which is easily fixed with new pickups).
The artist formerly known as mbene085.

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mcatano
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Re: MIJ 60s Traditional JM v MIM 60th Anniversary JM v ?? - Black & Gold Hardware

Post by mcatano » Wed Jan 02, 2019 1:17 pm

The MIM will have (arguably) a worse-quality tremolo and better/more-vintage-accurate pickups as well as a nitro paint job which will probably age in a more predictable way compared to the 90s .jp JM.

There's been a set of gold hardware that's been pulled off one of the '94 japanese offsets sitting on reverb for a few months now—it's not in the best shape, but you could pick that up and swap out whatever comes on the MIM JM.

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